I don't think it even matters that the whole thing could he a hoax, what bothers people is the fact that it's another instance of "rules for me, but not for thee". I vaguely remember a time when a dossier of dubious origin partially funded by the DNC and filled to the brim with completely made up disinformation was used to obtain fraudulent warrants and launch a massive investigation that resulted in effectively nothing at all, but now that the shoe is on the other foot everyone's expected to look the other way. If the Democrats were contacted by an "anonymous source" claiming to have one of Trump's laptops and willing to share its salacious contents, it would be on the front page of every single newspaper including Koi Ponds Illustrated. In fact, the majority of recent Trump stories seem to be coming from anonymous sources, including his leaked tax returns, making any of the claims impossible to verify. Liberals have set the bar for what is and is not a story, so if they expect people to care about their nothing burgers, this whopper isn't going away until they eat it too.
This might well be something to ponder.
Journalism in general constantly gets to skirt the line between interest of the public and of the public interest, the difference being if you filmed someone of some vague note taking a dump you would probably get viewers but it would say nothing of substance. Said same smoking crack might be a different matter, even more so if they were purportedly against it.
"but muh privacy" would then mean nothing gets done, save perhaps propaganda, so it is a rather permeable shield.
Some combine this with undue damage.
Some, this includes the law in many places, combine it further with notions of public figures and harm to reputation (
a particularly amusing case in the US recently wherein a former baseball type was deemed to have such a horrible reputation that it was impossible to impugn it).
We have seen any number of leaks over the years, some containing some rather incredible info (the cheat on your spouse website thing being a fun one for a lot of people if we need abstract because politics is too hard to divorce ourselves from feelings for). To say nothing of the wikileaks question.
We have seen any number of evidence of dubious quality. Might we be allowed to determine such things for ourselves or do we have to wait for word from on high?
A lot of these are quite hard questions without obvious answers.
I do however find double standards and censorship rather troubling. Some do attempt to balance it with interference, though whether you have to tolerate that or not (we are all big boys after all) does become a question.
Maybe we can get some internet to actually do a nice distributed theme again rather than just constantly inventing a worse version of email and guest books.
"set the bar for what is"
One of the hard questions is do you roll in the mud or hold yourself to higher standards? Eye for eye creating the one eyed king and all that. Whether in this case it would be akin to rolling in the mud is then a discussion to have.
I would note though that much like freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences for that speech then freedom of association does not mean freedom from consequences from those associations. Far lesser roles are troubled by this, and one's cronies are also subject to review.
Having a screwup for a kid is one thing, possibly quite likely if you are doing the career politico bit (because throw money at it absentee parenting combined with unearned wealth for the second generation ends so well so often), but should they be a patsy, a stooge or a confidant then that is quite another.